Wild Heritage

by Wild Heritage (retail) (epub)

  ‘My dear Miss Benjamin!’ she exclaimed. ‘How kind. Have you come to tell me all about Professor Abernethy’s class? I’ve been dying to hear how you got on with him. He’s very quaint, I believe.

  Marie took the chair that was indicated to her and said awkwardly, ‘Yes, your ladyship. He’s kind and he said he could teach me a lot – about colour and perspective in particular.’

  Bethya said, ‘I do hope that means you’ve decided to continue going to Edinburgh.’

  The girl nodded. ‘Oh yes, I want to go on attending the classes. The atmosphere of the studio makes me want to work. I’m so grateful to you, your ladyship.’ Marie was concerned at Bethya’s wan look, however, and soon rose from her seat, saying, ‘I don’t want to tire you out. I only came to say it was a wonderful experience and that I’d like to continue going to the classes…’

  But Bethya gave a little gasp and gestured to her to sit still. ‘I’m only a little tired. Though I wonder what I’ve got to be tired about. I don’t seem to have to do anything but lie here. My husband is quite exasperated with me. No wonder he’s gone to London again! I want to hear everything from you today because I’m going back south tomorrow.’

  Marie was genuinely disappointed. ‘So soon! I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said.

  Bethya smiled. ‘But I’ll only be away till next year. When I come back I want to see all the pictures you’ve painted.’

  Marie blushed. ‘I hope I don’t disappoint you, Lady Godolphin,’ she said.

  ‘You won’t,’ said Bethya confidently. ‘I’ve great hopes for you.’

  She had no idea what a deep impression she made on Marie, who left Bella Vista that afternoon absolutely determined to justify Bethya’s faith in her, no matter how much hard work it took.

  And she did work hard. She worked from the moment she set foot inside the painting studio till the moment when she had to clean her brushes and return home. At Camptounfoot, she continued to work, drawing and sketching from morning till night and all the time her skill was increasing. Her application and eagerness to learn was greater than that of any other student in Professor Abernethy’s experience and when he wrote to tell Bethya so, she, in her turn, glowed with the feeling of having done something useful. She looked on Marie as her private project. Somehow it was very important to her that the girl should do well.

  There were other effects on Marie, however, apart from making her more skilled with brush and pencil. By the time six months had passed, she began to feel as if she were two different people.

  At home in Camptounfoot, she was the same girl that she had always been – sweet-natured, shy Marie who was anxious to please everyone. She still looked forward to the occasions when Kitty was able to slip away from work and they could go for one of their old walks along the hedge-lined lanes that radiated out from the village. They tried to talk as closely and confidentially as they had always done but little by little their worlds were drawing apart and Marie unconsciously began looking at her old friend with more sophisticated eyes, to see her from a different perspective.

  For when she went to Edinburgh Marie became a different person. There she was no longer a navvy’s abandoned child, a penniless orphan. In the art class she was a star, a person of mystery, a girl who held her own among the daughters of lawyers and judges, landowners and men of property. They assumed that she came from the same background as they did and, though she hated herself for the deception, she did nothing to disabuse them of that idea.

  That meant she drifted into an uncomfortable situation in which she did not have the courage to make her true circumstances known. She should have told the truth from the beginning but the opportunity never seemed to come. Because she had been accepted into the art class under the auspices of Lady Godolphin, who was paying her bills, it was assumed that she must be some irregular relation to the Godolphin family. Many of the well-to-do girls had relations born on the wrong side of the blanket who were absorbed into their families in a sideways manner. If they were girls, they were educated and, hopefully, married off well or, failing that, provided with a post as governess in some superior family.

  Marie’s fellow students assumed that she was one of those illegitimate sprigs of a lordly tree. They did not think less of her because of it.

  Amy Roxburgh was always the most friendly of Marie’s fellow pupils and when she finished covering her own canvases with daubs of colour, she would come wandering over to see what Marie was doing and always expressed deep admiration.

  ‘You’re very clever. How do you do it? You must show me because I’m really quite serious about wanting to paint well, you see,’ she enthused. In fact, Amy was a vigorous and original painter but she lacked the discipline to concentrate on her work.

  It was different with Marie, who was obsessive and painstaking. Whatever the Professor told her, she absorbed eagerly and put into practice. In a short time she finished with George and progressed to drawing other plaster casts taken from the Professor’s store. He brought out a succession of posturing nymphs, armless torsos and, one day, a large statue of a male discus thrower wearing nothing except a strategically placed fig-leaf, which caused a lot of girlish giggling.

  One afternoon, when they were leaving the class Marie and Amy walked down the stairs together and Amy said, ‘No maid today, I see. That girl you brought on your first day was a complete bully.’

  Marie smiled. ‘I only had her with me on the first day to make sure I found the house and because my brother thought I wouldn’t be safe alone, but I prefer being on my own.’

  ‘Your brother sounds like my parents. I wish they’d let me out without a servant but they always worry if I’m alone. You’ve obviously won your brother round. How did you do it?’ said Amy mournfully.

  The coachman, who delivered her to classes and collected her when they were finished, was waiting impassively at the door while she stood making conversation with Marie.

  ‘My brother doesn’t live at home any more so he doesn’t know I’m going out without a servant,’ Marie told her.

  ‘Don’t you have parents – a mother or a father?’ Amy sounded surprised.

  Marie shook her head. ‘Both of them are dead. My brother and I were brought up by Nanny Rush and when she died, we went to Mrs Mather. That’s where I live now.’

  ‘Orphans! How romantic.’ Amy clasped her hands in admiration.

  ‘You’re lucky to have a mother and a father. I don’t remember either of mine,’ said Marie sadly.

  ‘But your relative, Lady Godolphin, and your nanny have looked after you, haven’t they?’ asked Amy and Marie realised that Amy assumed ‘Nanny Rush’ was a servant who looked after children and that Bethya’s philanthropy was not caused by charitable admiration but by blood links. That was her chance to tell the truth but she let the moment pass. She was afraid of how Amy, with her liveried coachman and privileged life, would react to the news that her new friend was the daughter of a navvy and did not even know her father’s real name.

  Then the real deception began. Marie was quick-witted and a fast learner, so, by listening to the chatter of Amy and the other girls in the painting class, she quickly absorbed their mores and mannerisms. She watched how they behaved, she listened to their descriptions of what happened to them when they were away from classes and, little by little, she began to feel as if she belonged to their world.

  She hated herself for her silent lies but having let things go for a long time, it was too late to back out.

  One cold winter day when the train had been very late in arriving at Edinburgh because it had encountered snowdrifts on the top of the hills that cut the capital off from the Borders, Marie arrived shivering with cold and found the girls all crowded round a blazing fire and doing no work as the Professor was sick with an ague.

  Amy immediately noticed that Marie’s fingers were blue and wrinkled on the tips with cold.

  ‘My dear, look at your hands. Don’t you wear gloves?’ she exclaimed.

 
; Marie did not own a pair of gloves, only fingerless mittens like those worn by women working on the farms, and she did not want to own up to them though they were in her pocket. ‘I forgot them, she lied. To change the subject she told the girls about the tremendous snowdrifts that had held up her train and how wonderful the world looked in its cloak of pure white. ‘I wanted to paint it there and then,’ she said.

  Amy, however, was not thinking about painting. ‘You’ll never get home tonight. Look, it’s started to snow again,’ she said, pointing at the southern-facing window. A curtain of drifting snowflakes like big goose feathers was sailing past it.

  Marie was upset. ‘But I must go home! Tibbie’ll be so worried about me. I’ll have to go now…’ She was pulling on her cloak again in a great hurry to get back to the station but Amy stopped her.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You don’t want to be in a stranded train all night, do you? You’ll come home with me and we’ll send a telegraphic message to your Tibbie.’

  ‘But Tibbie’s never had a telegraph message,’ protested Marie. In her experience no one in the whole of Camptounfoot had ever received such a thing. It was quite an occasion when the postman delivered a letter to anyone’s house.

  ‘Then she’s going to get one today,’ laughed Amy. ‘My man’s outside. I’ll send him to the railway station to despatch it. I think I’ve enough money to pay for it.’ She shoved a hand into the pocket of her skirt and came out with a green morocco purse that she emptied into her other hand. Several guinea coins glittered there and she said casually, ‘Oh yes, I’ve enough. I’ll go down and tell him what to do. Come with me Marie and give him the address for the message. I think it should be something like, “Don’t worry, am staying in Edinburgh till the snow stops with Amy Roxburgh, who is very respectable.” Will that do?’

  I shouldn’t be doing this. I should try to get home, thought Marie but the lure of staying the night with Amy was too strong so she obediently wrote down Tibbie’s address… ‘Mrs Mather, Camptounfoot’, which implied that she dominated the village and not that it was so small that everyone there knew everybody else.

  When the coachman went off with the message, Amy clutched Marie’s arm and cried, ‘Isn’t this fun! My family will love to meet you because I’ve told them all about you. My mother loves art. That’s why she sent me to the classes. She thinks that I’ll turn into a female Leonardo da Vinci or something but I’m afraid there’s not much hope of that. Bring some of your drawings to show her.’

  The Roxburgh carriage was snug because the attentive coachman tucked the girls in beneath fur-lined rugs and placed a copper pan of warm charcoal at their feet. Through its little windows they could see that snow was already piling up in the streets of the city and Marie felt as if she were in a fairy story as they drove along. She had never been in such a grand conveyance before because her road travelling had been on the exposed top of the cart of the Camptounfoot carrier who sometimes gave her and Tibbie a lift to Rosewell or Maddiston.

  The pair of horses pulling Amy’s carriage slithered and slipped along Princes Street and headed out of the city in a westward direction. They passed lines of houses and shops with lights festively blazing in the windows. The shops were all crowded as if people were rushing out to spend their money because of the bitter weather. Amy sensed her companion’s excitement and laughed. ‘You’re acting as if you’ve never been on a busy street before!’

  ‘Well I haven’t. Rosewell’s only like a little corner of Edinburgh. And it’s much more old-fashioned, another world.’

  Amy said, ‘I suppose it is, but this part of the town’s too new for me. I preferred our old house to the one we live in now. We used to have a place in George Square and there was constant coming and going on the pavement outside the front door, but Mama wanted a house with a park so now we live in Murrayhill. She named it after her family… she’s a Murray and very proud of it. She even named one of my brothers Murray, too!’

  Marie had heard enough of the conversation between the art class girls to realise that family names were of paramount importance and could guess that the Murrays set themselves higher than the Roxburghs.

  It took half an hour and a hard haul for the horses to cover the three miles to Murrayhill, which, to Marie’s amazement, turned out to be a vast Palladian-type mansion sitting on the side of a south-facing hill and staring out over lawns, all covered with snow.

  The gates were open in anticipation of Amy’s arrival and when the carriage drew up to the front door a male servant ran out and hurried Amy in through the snow, exclaiming, ‘Come in quickly, miss, your mama’s been worried about you in this terrible weather.’

  ‘I’m all right, but I’ve brought a real storm victim with me. Miss Benjamin can’t get home to the Borders. Prepare a room for her please,’ ordered Amy.

  ‘I don’t want to be any trouble,’ breathed Marie, which made both the servant and Amy look at her in surprise.

  ‘It’s no trouble. We’ve got dozens of empty bedrooms. You’re welcome to one of them,’ said Amy.

  Mrs Roxburgh was sitting in the library before a blazing fire and she certainly didn’t behave like someone who was worried about her daughter’s journey through the storm. When the girls walked into the room she looked up without surprise and kept her finger in the book she was reading to mark her place.

  In appearance she resembled Amy a little, though there were grey streaks in her hair and her face was deeply wrinkled. To Marie she seemed as old as Tibbie, which was a disappointment because she’d visualized Amy’s mother as young and smartly dressed, rather like Bethya.

  What she lacked in looks, however, Mrs Roxburgh made up for in confidence and assurance. She behaved as if the introduction of an unknown girl as a house guest was an everyday occurrence, smiled at Marie, shook her hand and then said, ‘You must be the Miss Benjamin my daughter has been talking so much about. I believe you’re a very talented girl. The only one of Professor Abernethy’s present pupils with genuine talent, according to Amy.’

  Marie flushed. ‘I don’t think I’m as good as that.’

  Amy chipped in, ‘Now, now, Marie, don’t act false modesty. You know perfectly well that the Prof s in a wax of delight about having you in the class. You’re the only real painter among us.’

  ‘You’re a good painter too,’ protested Marie.

  Mrs Roxburgh shot the stranger a sharp glance over her eye glasses and said, ‘Amy could be better if she tried. Perhaps your example will make her change her ways.’

  Amy laughed. ‘Mama, you only want something to hang on your walls and tell your blue-stocking friends that it’s by your daughter.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed her mother unabashed. Then she looked at Marie again. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll show me something you’ve done, Miss Benjamin.’

  Amy giggled. ‘I knew you’d ask that. I told Marie to bring some of her drawings with her so’s you could see them. She’ll show them to you after supper.

  The finger came out of the book. ‘I’m interested now. Bring them in. I want to see what my daughter’s been raving about for weeks.’

  The reception of Marie’s drawings was sufficiently enthusiastic to make her embarrassment even deeper.

  ‘How old are you?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked after she had leafed through the drawings several times.

  ‘I’m sixteen.’

  ‘Who taught you to draw?’

  ‘No one. I’ve been doing it since I was very small. My first teacher was Nanny Rush. She taught me to copy pictures out of books and when I wanted to do something with colour she bought me a little box of paints.’

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘About five I think.’

  ‘Mmm. Like Mozart or Thomas Bewick,’ said Mrs Roxburgh, handing the sheets of drawings back. ‘You’re obviously one of those freaks of nature. Be careful that too much teaching doesn’t spoil what you’ve got.’

  Marie took her work and put it back carefully in her case. She didn’t kno
w if she’d really been complimented or not and Amy saw her confusion. ‘Who was Thomas Bewick, Mama?’ she asked.

  ‘An eighteenth-century wood engraver who did wonderful countryside scenes, quite untaught. When he was only a child he made drawings with a stone on the hearth of his home in Northumberland.’

  Amy looked at Marie and said, ‘My mama has more information in her head than encyclopedias have between their covers. She should have been a university professor.’

  ‘If I was a man that’s what I would have been,’ said her mother bleakly, taking up her book again.

  This was obviously a signal for the girls to leave and Amy took Marie’s arm saying, ‘Let’s go. I’ll show you the room you’ve to sleep in. We’ll see Mother at dinner.’ Mrs Roxburgh only waggled a vague hand in their direction as they were leaving the room, for she was deep in her book again.

  Outside the door Amy laughed. ‘Isn’t she funny? She liked your pictures, though. I could tell she was impressed and it takes a lot to impress her.’

  When she was left alone in the bedroom assigned to her by a maid, Marie wandered around gazing at the heavy furniture and the oil paintings that adorned the walls. The paintings were of the ‘impressive mountain landscape’ school with shaggy cattle and rushing streams which did not appeal to her but she appreciated the luxury and comfort of the room. A fire blazed in the hearth, the bed was deep in blankets and a feather quilt, and a pile of books lay on a table by the bedhead.

  When the maid came back and asked if she would be required to help the guest dress for dinner, Marie shook her head, for she had no baggage except her drawing case and the thought of going down to dine in her travelling clothes with a collection of strangers terrified her.

  ‘I feel a little ill. I don’t think I want any dinner. Please give my apologies to the family,’ she said.

  ‘You’re ill? I’ll fetch the housekeeper,’ said the maid and hurried away.